You are a product manager of a consumer product. While searching for your product name, you find a really nasty review (on a discussion forum) about your product as the top result on Google. On investigation, you saw truth in the review. What will you do?

a.) Request the admin to take off the review
b.) Respond as a company representative & acknowledge the mistake
c.) As a long term measure, leverage SEO to get positive reviews among the top results
d.) Continuously encourage your delighted customers to share their experiences

Given the above scenario, choices b, c and d are correct. In the world of Social Media, ‘being transparent and responsible’ is key to success. Thus, choice a will be inappropriate. Truly speaking, your customers & users want to be heard. The moment you acknowledge your mistake and take responsibility for it, the discussion in the forum is likely to stop. Thus choice b is correct. Also, given more & more search results will comprise of Social Media, it is wise to encourage your satisfied customers to share their experiences and use SEO to get positive experiences stay on top. Thus, choices c and d are also correct. Find out more about ORM including few interesting examples in the Online Reputation Management guide, originally authored for WSJ.